A Return Of Market Volatility: Could It be? | Weekly Roundup - February 3, 2018

After what seemed like a really quick January, February is now upon us.  As I get older the days/weeks/months/years really seem to fly by faster and faster.  Of course I imagine that's one of the reasons that many of us are striving to reach financial independence because we value our scarcest commodity of them all: time.
There wasn't much to report on from last week although it is nice to see a bunch of dividend increases come rolling in.  Even better is that there's plenty more on the way which just helps to increase our dividend income and get us that much closer to reaching financial independence.

The S&P 500 gained around 8% to start 2018 off; however, the last week of January proved to be a bit more volatile.  There's no doubt that 2017 was an outlier year with the S&P 500 gaining nearly 20% while also spending the entire year with essentially no volatility.  It was a one way move higher for pretty much the entire year.  

Now that the markets have shown a little bit of volatility with the major indexes down around 2% on Friday alone the headlines, clickbaity as they are, are all talking about how the market plunged.  And the futures are plummeting.  Yeah the headline number for the DJIA was big with over a 650 point drop on Friday, but you have to look at things in terms of percentages.  In all reality that was just a 2.5% drop which isn't really anything to get excited about.

I have no clue if this little sell off is the start of a bigger decline or just another blip before another move higher.  No one does.  However, I do think it's funny how quickly attitudes can change.  All throughout 2017 everyone was saying the markets needed a 5-10% correction, now we might be on the precipice of that and the talking heads are concerned because we might be getting the correction they all wanted.  So in other words, ignore the talking heads and focus on purchasing excellent companies when you deem them to be at fair value or cheaper then hold for the long term.

On to the Roundup

In case you missed them, here's the posts from Passive-Income-Pursuit over the past week.

• One Raise At A Time | 23 Consecutive Quarters
• 2018 Targets
• One Raise At A Time | 2 Champions With Monster Increases

Also, be sure to sign up to receive posts via email and to follow me on Twitter@JC_PIP so you don't miss anything.  You can also follow me on Facebook or Pinterest if you prefer those methods to get your daily fix and keep up to date on happenings around here.

Once again I'd like to say thanks to each and every one of you that read, commented, and shared posts from here this past week.  This dividend growth investing and financial independence community is amazing and the openness from everyone is awesome.  Thanks again!

Now on to the links!

Fourteen Dividend Aristocrats For Further Research by Dividend Growth Investor

How Much Investment Risk To Take In Retirement by Financial Samurai

Expected Dividend Increases in February 2018 by Dividend Diplomats

How To Pay Zero Capital Gains by 1500 Days to Freedom

Recent Stock Purchase II January 2018 by DivHut

How Did The Financial Crisis Change You? by Retire By 40

Why GCCJr Has No 529 by Go Curry Cracker

DivGro Pulse: January 2018 by DivGro

2018 Dividend Stocks For Consideration by Tawcan

Recent Buy - IPL by Roadmap2Retire

February 2018 Dividend Growth Watchlist by Dividend Family Guy

How To Predict The Next Recession by Freedom 35

Options Update - January 2018 by All About Interest

Lessons From Phil Knight About Business And Being An Entrepreneur by 25iq

What To Do When Your Stocks Are Soaring? by A Wealth of Common Sense

If you're looking for investment ideas, A Frugal Family's Journey maintains a list of stock analyses and recent buys from fellow bloggers.

I hope you all have a great weekend!